And all with a sober face. The children laughed, supposing Cyrus was being funny for their amusement. But never in his life had Cyrus felt less like being funny. Soberly he walked away not even hearing their laughter. After this interview with Major he at once relapsed into the Cañon of Despair. For his was the agony of a man of honor who feels he has committed a disgraceful act, and has lost, for all time, the respect and good opinion of the being whose affection he valued above all other things. It seemed but a moment after leaving Major that he found himself standing before two women and saying "how do you do"--or something equally significant. With a mighty effort to ignore the past--and the future--he recognized the two elderly maidens as Miss Fidelia Allen and Miss Anita Clement. They had stopped and were passing the time of day with him. He realized, blindly, that Miss Clement had opened a book and was telling him about it. Miss Clement had the faculty of expressing a barren idea in a wealth of language. So, while the listener's drowsy--and now dreaming--eyes rested on the speaker's lips he was seeing, not Miss Clement's face, but a face more threatening, yet of greater interest. As to the effect of Miss Clement's well chosen words on the listener's far away mind, the sound from her lips might have been the murmuring of pines. And as for The Only Woman in the world, if other women had changed their minds why not this one? He recalled the look in her eyes when---- "Do tell us what you think of it--just how you feel about it, Cyrus?" As the wild horse of the prairies is suddenly jerked to earth by a lasso, so came back Cyrus. "Oh--oh--very well, indeed, thank you. Never better." "I meant about this new thought from the Orient. Just how deeply it impresses you. Just where, among the great thinkers, you would place Rub-a Shah Lagore." "That's it exactly! Rubbish galore! Couldn't express it better. Somebody described all that stuff as transcendental flim-flam." And he smiled his most winning smile--a smile of sympathy, of fine intelligence and a lively interest in the conversation. But Miss Clement stiffened a little, and frowned. "Do you feel that way?" "Possibly you don't know Rub-a Shah Lagore," said Miss Fidelia, more gently. "Know him? Oh, yes," said Cyrus. "I know him. That is, I think I met him. Was it in Cambridge?" "I doubt it," said Miss Clement, "as he died about fifteen hundred." "Fifteen hundred!" Cyrus smiled, nodded and tried to appear at ease. "Still I may have met him in a previous incarnation." Then, apropos of incarnations, Miss Clement discoursed on the Oriental mind, on matters psychic, philosophic, mystic and occult. And as she talked, and drifted hither and thither on a sea of words, Cyrus floated off in his own direction, and was recalling once again the look in Ruth's eyes--that mingling of anger and contempt when Miss Clement again suddenly brought him back to the village street.